Effects of time constraints on social spatial memory

The goal of this experiment was to determine if time constraints influence social spatial memory, the ability of one animal to remember the locations visited by another. Galef (1995) states that animals use social information selectively. The social information in this experiment is memory for where a conspecific has been. By limiting the foraging time of the animals, it was hypothesized that social information would be more valuable. Two groups of male Sprague-Dawley rats foraged for either 1 min or 4 min in an open field task. On half of the trials, the rats foraged with their cagemate and on the other half, they foraged separately. This design ruled out odor cues and/or other biases not related to foraging with a conspecific. The results of this experiment do not provide evidence for any social effects. Several possible explanations for the null results are considered.